Grimm’s Threats May Have Broken House Rules, Ethics Report Says

By ERIC LIPTON

June 25, 2014

WASHINGTON — Representative Michael G. Grimm of New York, who is already facing criminal charges, may also have violated House ethics rules in January when he threatened a reporter for the NY1 television station who was interviewing him in the Capitol, the Office of Congressional Ethics has concluded.

A one-page report by the office, a quasi-independent investigative body that serves almost like a grand jury, was released on Wednesday by the House Ethics Committee, the panel of lawmakers with the exclusive power to punish colleagues for ethical infractions.

The Office of Congressional Ethics, in a preliminary review, unanimously concluded in March that there was “substantial reason to believe that Representative Grimm threatened a reporter with bodily harm and engaged in a threatening or menacing act that created a fear of immediate injury,” which would violate local law in the District of Columbia as well as House ethics rules.

The investigation took place after Mr. Grimm, a second-term Republican from Staten Island and a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, threatened to “break” a NY1 reporter and throw him off a House office building balcony at the end of a television interview with the reporter.

Any further investigation of the threats against the NY1 reporter, Michael Scotto, is being put off at the request of federal criminal investigators. They separately charged Mr. Grimm with fraud in April, accusing him of underreporting wages and revenue while running a restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, before he joined the House in 2011.

Mr. Grimm has continued to serve in Congress, despite the multiple legal matters. But he has maintained a low profile since his arrest and has resigned from his seat on the Financial Services Committee. He is seeking re-election in November.